Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Jimmy orr

Jimmy Orr

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

Republicans on both sides of the pro-and anti-Freedom Caucus divide voiced critiques Monday on a 

 that dissects one of the Cowboy State’s fiercest legislative races.

“In the shadow of Devils Tower,” begins the story, “an election-year fight has erupted between Wyoming’s right and its far right, with serious implications for the state’s political future.”

The story covers the state Senate race between two Republicans: Wyoming Freedom Caucus (WFC) member and House Speaker Chip Neiman, and the upper chamber’s incumbent, Sen. Ogden Driskill.

That race is anthemic of the divide between the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and its intra-party foes, multiple news outlets and the NYT have agreed.  

[{"type":"text","text":"But it’s difficult to capture the nuance of it."}]

The story casts non-Freedom Caucus lawmakers as institutionalists, caucus members as insurgents. It touches on the caucus-led passage of a 25% residential property tax cut, and it airs both ideals of caucus leaders and grievances of their critics.

The caucus’ priorities, WFC chair Rep. Rachel Williams told the outlet, include shrinking government, tightening voting rules, and curtailing “activist” judges.

The NYT covered Neiman’s long battle for pro-life legislation and Driskill’s efforts this year to shield the University of Wyoming from a $40 million cut and the Wyoming Business Council from complete repeal.

[{"type":"text","text":"But Who Owns The Right?"}]

Former state Rep. Ember Oakley, who’s a career prosecutor and a detractor of the caucus, said the story repeats a fallacy that the Freedom Caucus is more conservative than its Republican foes.

Neiman had the inverse critique, saying though the story labels him as “far-right” he’s the normal right, and Driskill is, he asserted, a “Democrat.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Oakley responded to that barb hours before Neiman said it."}]

“This race actually does exemplify the division sowed by the Freedom Caucus, because classifying Ogden Driskill as anything but a solid conservative is ridiculous,” she said. “You can find this out by the policies he supports, his voting in the Senate, or any time you speak with the man.”

Driskill also bristled at being called a Democrat. He called it an instance of juvenile and disheartening name-calling, and described himself as a Reagan Republican.

He noted that he’s fought against both fuel and cigarette taxes throughout his 16-year legislative career.

Wyoming has produced no universal agreement about what it means to embody the political “right.”  

“I take umbrage with the continued classification (of) the Freedom Caucus being more conservative than the traditional, long-term Republican Wyomingites,” said Oakley.

[{"type":"text","text":"She gave an example."}]

While the Freedom Caucus passed the 25% property tax cut, its ally, gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien, led the effort to put another 50% residential property tax cut on the ballot this November.

Oakley stressed that because property taxes fund local governments – such as ambulance, firefighting, law enforcement, and schools – the locals of each county are funding their own services through them.

Offloading the tax burden onto another revenue structure, like the energy industry or sales taxes, shifts each local services bill from the people who are receiving the services, Oakley noted. She added that it would also shift communities’ autonomy to the bigger state government.

“Local control, instead of the bigger government – yes, even state – has always been a central tenet to Republicanism,” she said.

She called the WFC’s battle cry against “activist judges” a red herring, and said “Republicans in this state have traditionally had a respect for the rule of law and the Constitution that mandates separation of powers.”

WFC state director Jessie Rubino did not respond by publication to a Sunday text message and Monday voicemail request for comment on the NYT story.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘Ol Kitty Dog’"}]

Neiman was pleased to find his dog named for the Gunsmoke character Miss Kitty Russell in the NYT’s profile photograph of him.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That is a cool picture of me with Ol’ Kitty Dog,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"His delight ended there."}]

Neiman disagreed with the outlet calling him far-right. He said he follows the Wyoming Republican Party platform, and doesn’t believe the state party’s current candidate vetting process calling for 80% or higher agreement is a tall ask.

“Then he calls Ogden a ‘merely conservative.’ I don’t even know what that is,” said Neiman.

Of being called an “insurgent,” Neiman said with a laugh, “Jeez-oh-Pete … Sounds like we’re creating an insurrection.”

Neiman said Freedom Caucus members are “just taxpayers wanting to be involved in the conversation.”

Driskill had called the Wyoming GOP’s new platform-based vetting rule a “purity test.”

 to broad strokes and inconsistencies in the platform.

For example, it says people have a right to life from conception to natural death – wording that could alienate Republicans who support the death penalty.

The story references the Common Sense Republicans, a new PAC that warns of caucus-led deep cuts to services and education.

Neiman countered this, noting that the Freedom Caucus joined nearly the entire Legislature in passing a new school-funding bill that increased K-12 spending and teacher pay.

When the Legislature passed the 25% property tax cut, he noted, property taxes had just soared.

Neiman said Wyoming would have clearer ideas about politics if it had a strong Democratic Party.

“We fight inside the Republican Party because the Democratic Party has moved into the Republican Party,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"What Is A Democrat?"}]

Driskill countered, “I wish (Neiman) understood what a Democrat is, because he obviously does not.”

“I was going to Republican state conventions when he was in diapers,” added Driskill.

Driskill said he has encountered people on the campaign trail who’ve been told that he’s a leftist, and he’s spent time going over his record with people to undo what he calls trickery from his foes.

Driskill noted that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and its members often tout as victories bills that passed with broader support by 

While the NYT story didn’t capture “the whole drift of what we’re like in northeast Wyoming,” said Driskill, the authors tried to be fair and did a reasonable job.

Oakley lodged a technical note: the story calls Neiman’s decision to leave the House and run for Senate an “unusual gamble.”

Actually, it’s tradition in Wyoming for the Speaker to serve just one term in that role, Oakley observed.

The chamber elects a House speaker every two years. Its two most recent speakers before Neiman, Albert Sommers and Eric Barlow, both ran for Senate after their terms.

[{"type":"text","text":"Nah, Says Lindholm"}]

Tyler Lindholm, Wyoming-based director of Americans For Prosperity and a side character in the NYT story, didn’t have any real gripes about it Monday.

“I don’t really think it said much at all,” said Lindholm. “For once I wasn’t very exciting, I guess.”

Neiman Driskill and Capitol 8 17 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Wyoming Politics: What The New York Times Got Right, And Wrong | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The New York Times featured the Wyoming Senate race between Chip Neiman and Ogden Driskill as an example of Wyoming's Republican Party divide. That's accurate, but no one in that race thinks Neiman represents the "far right."

Wyoming Politics: What The New York Times Got Right, And Wrong

Tourism

[{"type":"text","text":"Some places just aren't a good fit for RVs and motorhomes. "}]

The Needles Highway in South Dakota’s Custer State Park, near Mount Rushmore, is one of them.

Denise Yelton and Todd Beaver discovered that during an excursion in Custer recently when a motorhome intended to thread the Needles Eye Tunnel found itself fraying halfway through.

Yelton and Beaver, who have been “full-time RVers” since April, decided to take an early-morning drive on the Needles Highway on Friday. They departed in their Jeep Gladiator, leaving their 38-foot Holiday Rambler Nautica parked at the campground.

“We left early because we knew the highway would get really crowded with Sturgis,” Yelton told Cowboy State Daily. “When we got to the tunnel, we pulled over because I wanted to record a video of my husband coming through the tunnel.”

When they pulled off the road, the Freedom Elite motorhome behind them kept going. That’s when disaster struck.

“I was sitting there waiting to see if he was going to make it through, and he got stuck,” Denise said. “I recorded it, obviously.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Aw, The Awning"}]

Drivers pass through three tunnels on the Needles Highway. The Needles Eye is the tightest at 8 feet, 4 inches wide and 9 feet, 8 inches tall.

Many people have attempted to get their RVs, motorhomes, and travel trailers through these tunnels, and many have failed. 

Yelton had seen videos of similar incidents and wasn’t keen to emulate them.

Yelton thought the Freedom Elite might have had a chance. Unfortunately for the couple pulling it, they were over-accessorized.

“The awning started scraping against the side of the tunnel,” she said. “When he realized that he wasn't going to make it, he started backing up, and that's when it was making all the noise.”

When the RV backed up far enough, the awning arm fully extended until it fell off. The driver backed out of the tunnel and parked in the pull-off to assess the damage with his wife.

Yelton and Beaver hopped in their Jeep and continued onward. Yelton assumed they conceded they couldn’t thread the Needles Eye and went back the way they came.

“I think he just thought he could get through, and maybe if it wasn't for the awnings, he possibly could have,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Don’t Be This Guy'"}]

Before Yelton posted the video of the RV incident on her 

, it had 347 followers. Three days later, it has more than 9,000 followers.

“It has blown my mind,” she said. “I’m not out there trying to get followers and stuff, but it's really blown my mind.”

When Beaver retired from the Charlotte Fire Department last year, the couple left Gastonia, North Carolina, in April and haven’t stopped since.

“We’re sharing our adventures and life on the road, one mile at a time,” Yelton said.

Yelton noticed that the Freedom Elite that attempted to scrape through the tunnel also had a North Carolina license plate. However, she figured that wasn’t a good time to chitchat.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I didn’t speak to them at all,” she said. “We just went on.”"}]

She did point out the numerous signs along the road warning drivers of the width and height of the upcoming tunnel. It seems the driver either underestimated the Freedom Elite’s width or overestimated his ability to get through the tunnel.

“He had to make it through the previous tunnel to get where he was, and that one was wider,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"There’s An App For That"}]

How can RV and motorhome drivers avoid these incidents? There’s an app for that.

As she was researching full-time RV life, Yelton learned the secret to safe travels is the RV Life app.

“We put our destination in the app, and it’ll tell us what we want to avoid,” she said. “That’s what you have to do as an RVer, and we knew that because we follow a lot of them.”

That’s why their 38-foot Holiday Rambler Nautica RV stayed where it was. That’s for living and traveling the open road, not exploring routes like the Needles Highway.

“We never would have intentions of taking our camper on a mountain road,” she said. “We've researched enough about the areas that we're headed to so we know what to do when we get there.”

Yelton and Beaver have been savoring South Dakota for several days. The next leg of their trip will take them on Interstate 90 to Buffalo, then over the Bighorns to Cody on their way to Yellowstone National Park.

Thanks to RV Life, they know where they can and can’t go with their RV, lest they end up facing scrutiny on social media.

“We’ve seen a lot of videos, so we knew our RV would never make it through those tunnels,” Yelton said. “That was my first time seeing something like that.”

RV stuck 8 17 26

<title>RV Driver Tries To Scrape Through South Dakota Needles Eye Tunnel, Gets Stuck | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A couple was videotaping the Needles Eye Tunnel in South Dakota’s Custer State Park on Friday when a motorhome tried to thread the narrow opening and became stuck. "I think he just thought he could get through," they said.

RV Driver Tries To Scrape Through South Dakota Needles Eye Tunnel, Gets Stuck

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Food

A so-called "prank caller" left a Cheyenne pizza shop holding 18 hot pizzas and a roughly $300 bill Friday.

[{"type":"text","text":"So L'Osteria Mondello did the only thing that seemed right."}]

The whole order was sent to the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center Emergency Room. 

What began as a costly prank Friday afternoon turned into an unexpected meal for health-care workers after the caller who ordered the pizzas never showed up — and the phone number used to place the order apparently belonged to someone who knew nothing about it.

For L'Osteria Mondello owner Dave Agovic, the episode was particularly frustrating because those weren't the only pizzas flying through his ovens.

At almost the same time, the restaurant had another order for 12 or 13 pizzas and yet another for seven or eight.

"I had like over 40 pizzas in the same time," Agovic told Cowboy State Daily.

The kitchen was so slammed the restaurant temporarily stopped taking  orders, telling callers it could be an hour and a half to two hours before they could accommodate them.

[{"type":"text","text":"And the people ordering the 18 pizzas wanted them fast."}]

They told the restaurant the food was for some sort of children's wrestling club, Agovic said. His crew hustled and had the order ready in roughly 40 minutes.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then nobody came."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Something Isn't Right"}]

The pizzas sat above L'Osteria Mondello's ovens, where the restaurant keeps orders warm until customers arrive, but space was disappearing.

Agovic still had legitimate orders coming through the kitchen, and 18 unclaimed pizzas take up an awful lot of room.

[{"type":"text","text":"Eventually, he called the number that had placed the order."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The person who answered said they hadn't ordered any pizzas."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"That's when Agovic realized what had happened."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I figure out it's a prank,\" he said."}]

In about 3 1/2 years running the restaurant, Agovic said something like this had happened only once.

The restaurant generally doesn't require customers to pay in advance because Agovic doesn't want to operate that way.

"We trust people," he said. "Cheyenne is a small place, and Cheyenne is the place with wonderful people. And we really try to make sure we have that trust with the local community."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Now What?"}]

Agovic looked at the mountain of food and asked his employees what they should do with it.

[{"type":"text","text":"The staff tossed around possibilities."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then Agovic had an idea."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Why don't we deliver it to the hospital?\""}]

The crew agreed the emergency room sounded right, but he needed help getting the pizzas there. 

At the same time, a former L'Osteria Mondello employee who  worked for Agovic for more than 2 1/2 years stopped by to say hello. 

Ryan Lemley, 18, wasn't scheduled to work, but when he saw what was happening, he volunteered.

[{"type":"text","text":"Ryan loaded up the pizzas and headed for the ER."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"He was my hero that day,\" Agovic said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Little Piece Of Italy"}]

For Agovic, feeding people is about considerably more than getting a pizza into a box.

He's originally from Montenegro, a small Mediterranean country in the former Yugoslavia.

He had lived in New York before coming to Cheyenne during the COVID-19 pandemic, initially expecting to stay only a couple of months.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then he met a woman from Cheyenne and \"fell in love.\" "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She also introduced him to L'Osteria Mondello. "}]

"Actually, this place was way better than most of the places I try pizza in New York City," he said.

He became friends with longtime owner Joe Mondello, who was looking toward retirement but worried about what would happen to the restaurant he'd spent decades building.

[{"type":"text","text":"Eventually, Mondello asked Agovic if he'd like to take it over."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Agovic told him he couldn't afford it."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Mondello offered to finance him."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"There was a condition: Don't mess with the recipes."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Today, Agovic runs the restaurant with his wife, Anika Williams."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And Joe Mondello hasn't disappeared."}]

Agovic said Mondello still stops in, sometimes every week or every few weeks. Occasionally, he'll make pizzas and visit with customers.

"I feel this is still his place because that's his baby," Agovic said. "He built it for last 40 years. I'm just keeping tradition, and we are just one big family."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Food Is A Lifestyle "}]

That idea of food bringing people together is part of what Agovic brought with him from Montenegro.

In Mediterranean culture, he said, a meal isn't supposed to be something people inhale before rushing out the door.

"Food is just not quick bites," he said. "Food is more about lifestyle."

[{"type":"text","text":"Meals stretch out. Families gather. People talk."}]

At L'Osteria Mondello, Agovic said he wants customers to have some version of that experience.

"Many people can't afford to go to Italy that often or ever," he said. "So they can try a little bit of Italy in our restaurant."

And rather than letting hundreds of dollars worth of food go cold because of somebody's joke, the people at L'Osteria Mondello found another table.

“They are very hardworking people and they help save a lot of lives around. And I was like, let's donate, let's reward them.”

Pizza 8 17 26

<title>Cheyenne Pizza Joint Gets Stiffed With $300 Order, Donates 18 Pizzas To Hospital | Cowboy State Daily</title>

After a so-called "prankster" left a Cheyenne pizza joint stuck with 18 pizzas and a $300+ bill, the restaurant donated them to emergency room workers at the Cheyenne hospital. “Let's reward them,” said Dave Agovic, owner of L'Osteria Mondello.

Cheyenne Pizza Joint Gets Stiffed With $300 Order, Donates 18 Pizzas To Hospital

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

In the hyper-competitive world of multi-million-dollar western real estate listings, buzzwords like “regenerative agriculture” often pad a broker’s promotional materials. But a $29.9 million ranch just listed by Hayden Outdoors near Weston in northeast Wyoming has a little more heft behind its hype than usual.

That’s because Martha Stewart traded the Hamptons for the High Plains of Wyoming last year to come study the farm-to-fork ecosystem at Steiner Ranch, which was then called Sweetgrass at Thunderbasin. 

Stewart later praised the operation on her official Instagram account, highlighting the “extreme” energy of the ranch’s owners, Rick Steiner and Deirdre Wildman. 

She was also interested in the property’s unique capacity to feed its guests almost entirely from the surrounding land, praising multi-course menus that featured on-site harvests of goose, rabbit, beef, poultry and local berries, as well as produce from the ranch’s greenhouses, orangery, and its open-air culinary gardens. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ranch Grows Everything It Needs"}]

It was the culinary garden that got the ranch noticed by Stewart, who owns a 153-acre farm in Connecticut. 

“Last year, early in the season, we had a group of shooters here and they saw my wife’s culinary garden, which is truly an extraordinary thing,” Steiner said. “It’s a culinary garden that produces enough stuff for us to provide literally all the vegetables that 250 guests eat during the course of the fall season.”

Steiner’s wife, Wildman, gave them all a tour of the gardens, explaining their approach to a regenerative, farm-to-fork operation.

“So the guy said to me, ‘I gotta get our chief gardening officer out here to see this,’” Steiner said with a chuckle. “And we said, ‘chief gardening officer?’”

Steiner has heard all sorts of acronyms such as CEO, COO, CFO. But that was the first time hearing CGO.

“And then he said, ‘It’s Martha Stewart,’” Steiner said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of interesting.’”

That Stewart visit wasn’t something Steiner thought would happen. But the following Monday morning he had a text asking if such and such date would work for Stewart’s visit.

“Sure enough, they were out here 10 days later and got the full tour of the gardens and the ranch,” Steiner said. “And we have a small animal farming operation that raises chickens and turkeys and ducks and geese, rabbits and goats, and those also, both eggs and meat, are served to guests.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"What It’s Like To Serve Martha Stewart"}]

Wildman served breakfast, lunch and dinner to Stewart. For breakfast she even used one of Stewart’s own biscuit recipes. 

“I’ll be honest with you, there’s a little bit of anxiety as to whether or not your biscuits are going to meet Martha Stewart’s standard,” Steiner said. “When my wife asked me about it, I said, ‘Well she ate several of them so …’ She passed with flying colors.”

Stewart, Steiner added, was a down-to-earth, gracious guest.

“She’s got a great sense of humor and she’s very engaging, very straightforward,” Steiner said. “She’s not shy about telling you what she thinks. I just found her delightful.”

Stewart posted several pictures about her visit on Instagram, including some standing with Deirdre and others on the ranch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Elevation Creates Unique Microclimate"}]

The ranch’s ability to grow so much produce is a feat in arid Wyoming, one that’s helped by the ranch’s elevation, which has created a favorable microclimate.

“I would say the surrounding (Thunder Basin) national grassland is a 16 to 24 inches a year precipitation environment, and the ranch I would say is 30 to 36 inches a year of precipitation environment,” Steiner told Cowboy State Daily. “The clouds roll in from whatever direction the wind is blowing and have to rise up to climb over the hills on the ranch and the ridge lines. When they rise up, they cool down and drop some moisture.”

That’s given the ranch all kinds of trees and created great habitat not only for gardening but for wildlife as well. 

“It’s the basis for what’s going on here in every dimension,” Steiner said. “It’s great for ranching. It’s really great for the wildlife. And it just makes the place much nicer and more scenic than most other places.”

The 5,582-acre Steiner Ranch in northeast Wyoming, a premiere spot for hunting trophy bull elk and mule deer, has just been listed for sale at nearly $30 million. Last year, Martha Stewart was at the ranch to study its farm-to-fork ecosystem.

Jeff Welsch

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